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Richard P. Gabriel
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What is Completely Wrong?
• Human well-being• QWAN, wholeness, life, beauty• Generativity•
Morality• Patterns build something• Mirror of Self• Goal of
Tears
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Human Well-BeingThe National Institutes of Health (NIH) wanted
to know if there was a relationship between the built environment
and human well-being. They would pay for research. Alexander and
colleagues responded…they got the job.
Many ‘walkabouts’ and discussions later, the team formulated the
concept of pattern and catalogued 253 instances of spatial
configurations that supported well-being in everyday, ordinary
life.
A Search for BeautyA Struggle with Complexity: Christopher
Alexander
–Gabriel & Quillien
Volume 1: The Timeless Way of BuildingVolume 2: A Pattern
LanguageVolume 3: The Oregon Experiment
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The elements of this language are entities called patterns. Each
pattern describes a problem which occurs over and over again in our
environment, and then describes the core of the solution to that
problem, in such a way that you can use this solution a million
times over, without ever doing it the same way twice.
QWAN & All That
Yes, that’s part of it…A Pattern Language
–Christopher Alexander, et al–Quoted in Design Patterns, GoF
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6. The specific patterns out of which a building or a town is
made may be alive or dead. To the extent they are alive, they let
our inner forces loose, and set us free; but when they are dead,
they keep us locked in inner conflict.
7. The more living patterns there are in a place—a room, a
building, or a town—the more it comes to life as an entirety, the
more it glows, the more it has that self maintaining fire which is
the quality without a name.
QWAN & All That
The Timeless Way of Building–Christopher Alexander, et al
–Not quoted in Design Patterns, GoF
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To reach the quality without a name we must then build a living
pattern language as a gate.
9. This quality in buildings and in towns cannot be made, but
only generated, indirectly, by the ordinary actions of the people,
just as a flower cannot be made, but only generated from the
seed…
QWAN & All That
The Timeless Way of Building–Christopher Alexander, et al
–Not quoted in Design Patterns, GoF
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Morality & Generativity…it looks to me more as though mainly
the pattern concept, for you, is an inspiring format that is a good
way of exchanging fragmentary, atomic, ideas about programming.
Indeed, as I understand it, that part is working very well. But
these other two dimensions, (1) the moral capacity to produce a
living structure and (2) the generativity of the thing, its
capability of producing coherent wholes—I haven’t seen very much
evidence of those two things in software pattern theory. Are these
your shortcomings? Or is it just because I don’t know how to read
the literature?
OOPSLA Keynote, 1996–Christopher Alexander
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Patterns Build Something
…the solution—the heart of the pattern—which describes the field
of physical and social relationships which are required to solve
the stated problem, in the stated context. This solution is always
stated in the form of an instruction—so that you know exactly what
you need to do, to build the pattern.
A Pattern Language–Christopher Alexander, et alBe sure you know
what each pattern builds.
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Mirror of Self
(a) (b)
If you had to choose one of these two carpets, as a picture of
your own self, which one would you choose?
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Mirror of Self
(a) (b)
…choose the one which seems better able to represent your whole
being, the essence of yourself, good and bad, all that is human in
you.
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Mirror of Self
(a) (b)
I believe that almost everyone, after careful thought, will
choose the left-hand example [a]… I believe most people will
conclude that the left-hand one is more profound: that one feels
more calm looking at it; that one could look at it, day after day,
for more years, that it fills one more successfully, with a calm
and peaceful feeling. All this is what I mean by saying that,
objectively, the left-hand carpet is the greater—and the more
whole, of the two.
A Foreshadowing of 21st Century Art–Christopher Alexander
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Goal of Tears
The I, that blazing one, is something which I reach only to the
extent that I experience, and make manifest, my feeling. What
feeling, exactly? What exactly am I aiming for in a building, in a
column, in a room? How do I define it for myself, so that I can
feel it clearly, so that it stands as a beacon to steer me in what
I do every day?
The Nature of Order–Christopher Alexander
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Goal of Tears
What I aim for is, most concretely, sadness. I try to make the
volume of the building so that it carries in it all feeling. To
reach this feeling, I try to make the building so that it carries
my eternal sadness. It comes, as nearly as I can in a building, to
the point of tears.
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Sadness in a beam, ornament, ceiling, columns, and windows.
